


i'm faking glory (lick my lips, toss my hair)

by heistsociety



Category: SKAM (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Character Study, F/F, F/M, So., bisexual eva, this is basically just about bisexuality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 14:44:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12707094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heistsociety/pseuds/heistsociety
Summary: So Eva thinks she’s bisexual.She keeps this to herself. She’s not ready to tell anyone and she’s still not sure if she’s right, but itfeelsright. She repeats the word to herself at night,bisexual, bisexual, bisexual,like it’s a church hymn, a song. It makes her feel at ease.(The idea of telling anyone else still sinks into her like a stab through the heart. She fears the rejection more than anything else.)





	i'm faking glory (lick my lips, toss my hair)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote almost 2.5k words of a eva kviig mohn character study instead of writing my nanowrimo novel #procrastination  
> so yeah this is unedited bc i don't have time to rn (i say, even though i apparently have time to write it) but i'll check through it later.  
> for now, enjoy.

Eva is five years old when she hears the word for the first time: _gay_ , spit out of a boy’s mouth like dragon’s fire, engulfing the world whole.

It’s not a new concept. There’s a girl in her class with two moms who drop her off and pick her up and smile like any other parents. It’s not weird, it’s not strange. Eva doesn’t even know that it _can_ be strange, two women happily married to each other.

 

When Eva is six years old and in the car with her parents, her mother makes an offhanded comment about how there’s a gay couple driving in front of them. Eva sits up to get a better look, as though a gay couple is some sort of strange and rare specimen that she wants to research.

“What does that mean?” She asks.

“It means that they are two men who are in love with each other,” her mother explains.

Eva’s not sure why, but she feels defensive, like it’s none of her mother’s business whether they’re a couple or not. Or maybe she feels like it is strange, like these two men aren’t supposed to love each other _like that_ , like they don’t unless they announce it. “Maybe they’re just best friends.”

“Maybe they are,” her mother answers, and that’s the end of that.

 

It’s not otherworldly to her, but it’s not particularly normal, either. The world is filled with men who love women and women who love men and Eva’s been taught since day one that she’s going to fall in love with a wonderful man who will look at her as though she’s the entire world.

She doesn’t question it.

She has a crush on the boy who sits across the room in fourth grade. She doesn’t speak to him much, but they’re paired up for a project once and when she sits next to him, she can feel her heart _thump thump thumping_ , a separate entity from her body trying to pound its way right out of her chest.

 

It’s not until she’s ten that she starts becoming _aware_ of what the word gay means, of the stigma that comes with it, of the way some people hate women who love women and men who love men. She thinks gay rights are important, thinks that they’re just human beings caught in the fabric of time, thinks that they should be treated just like anyone else.

She still can’t say the word out loud, unconsciously categorizes it with the rest of the ‘potty language’ – sex, fuck, and some of the more _private_ parts of her body.

Her class reads a poem with the word gay in it. It means happy in this context. Joy, cheer, a carefree nature. She wonders how such a benevolent word became attached to two boys holding hands became attached to a boy baring his teeth like a viper and hitting the easiest target over and over and over again, _gay gay gay_ falling out of his lips like it’s some sort of scathing insult.

She, like the rest of the class, muffles a laugh when the word is read out loud. She feels bad for the girl who had to read it, thanks the heavens that she didn’t have to be the one.

They muffle laughs, too, when the word breast is used in the next stanza, even if it is in regards to a lion.

 

But she’s not gay.

She’s not.

She doesn’t like girls. She would _know_ if she liked girls. That’s what people always say, isn’t it? That they’ve known from the very start like some cosmic message was given to them from the universe when they were born.

Everything gets so jumbled up in her head. How is she supposed to know? How do people ever know?

The important thing is that she has liked boys, does like boys, will always like boys.

That’s enough.

She’s not gay.

She shoves the idea to the back of her brain and doesn’t revisit it for the next few years.

 

She moves the summer before seventh grade when her parents get divorced, from Bergen and her home and her friends and everything she’s ever known to Oslo, a bustling city that is so, _so_ unfamiliar.

She’s scared to start school, scared of this new place and these new people and the hundreds of thousands of faces that she doesn’t recognize.

Some of the kids make fun of her accent and she doesn’t know where to sit during lunch and she feels like a puzzle piece that’s trying to shove its way into a spot where it doesn’t belong.

But this girl named Ingrid latches onto her sometime in the first day of the school, smiling like the sun and making her feel more at ease than she has in a long time. She introduces Eva to Sara and invites her to have lunch with them.

And she’s okay. Or, she will be. As okay as she ever is.

 

The _question_ rears its ugly head when she’s thirteen years old and feels a little more secure about her place in Oslo.

She doesn’t _want_ to like girls. She doesn’t _want_ to be different.

But she doesn’t understand how people _know_ that they’re straight or gay or bisexual or whatever the hell they are. She doesn’t understand how they can feel so secure in their own identity, especially because she’s never kissed anyone, let alone dated anyone, and she’s not sure she’ll ever _know_ unless she actually experiences something.

Because yes, there was that boy in fourth grade that made her stomach feel so full of butterflies that she thought she might burst, but she’s not sure that she can trust her own heart any longer. She’s not sure if the quickening of her heartbeat is from a crush or the crushing insecurity she feels about the way she speaks.

She’s not sure if she’s ever liked anyone. The girls at her table talk about boys sometimes and it makes her feel _so_ uncomfortable when they ask her if she likes anyone. She’s always quick to answer no, she doesn’t like anyone and she is never going to like anyone, because she’s not sure if she does. And she doesn’t want anyone to _know_ if she likes them – she can just imagine the mortification she would feel at knowing that someone didn’t like her back.

She doesn’t understand how people can talk about this so freely – love and relationships and crushes. It makes her stomach flip, her heart drop to the floor and it makes her feel so _disgusting_ , like if someone finds out she likes them then they’re going to think she’s disgusting, like she wants to shed off her skin and become someone else.

 

Maybe she’s being less subtle about her questioning than she wants to be. Maybe it’s because she cringes every time someone asks her if she thinks a boy is cute, maybe it’s because she’s so reluctant to talk about any of this, maybe, maybe, maybe. She didn’t think she was being obvious at all, but Sara tosses an arm around her and declares she’s going to set Eva up with someone.

“Please don’t,” she says.

“No, I’m going to.” She grins decisively. “So, who do you like? Boys? Girls?”

The question makes Eva panic, makes her feel like there are ten thousand eyes on her and they’re all waiting to tear her apart for her answer. “Oh, I don’t know,” she says, because she doesn’t want to lie. She’s not comfortable saying that she’s straight, she’s not comfortable saying that she’s gay, because she’s _not not not_. “I mean, I’m thirteen. Who knows at this age?”

“You don’t _know_?” Ingrid buts in. “Okay, look. Have you ever had a crush on a boy?”

Eva panic, panic, panics. She just wants this to be _over_. “Yes,” she says.

“Then you’re straight. There you go.” Ingrid smiles as though everything is solved and continues on with another topic.

Eva’s not so sure.

(She doesn’t understand why her friends are so _fucking_ obsessed with talking about their love lives, her love life, boys in general. She hates every second of it.)

 

Sara sets her up with a boy the next week and the date goes about as well as Eva expected. She lies through her teeth the next time she sees Sara, says that it went _fine_ , but she wasn’t interested in dating right now because she wanted to focus on school.

(The idea is laughable. Eva could swim in the amount of classes she’s failing.)

 

They start going to parties in Grade 10 and Eva quickly realizes that alcohol is an incredible way to make her mind feel more secure and to make _her_ more confident. She kisses a boy for the first time during a game of spin the bottle while everyone hoots around her. He tastes like whiskey and cigarettes and his stubble scratches roughly at her face.

Overall, it isn’t a bad experience.

So she goes to more parties and she kisses more boys and sometimes, she and Ingrid or she and Sara get so drunk that they just end up making out with each other.

It’s different, kissing a girl. They taste like lip gloss and their faces are so soft and they’re so _gentle_.

It’s different. It’s not better, it’s not worse. It’s just different.

 

Eva questions and questions and questions.

She’s still not sure if she likes girls, still feels like she only kisses her friends when she’s too drunk to remember her name. Maybe that’s just her being drunk. Maybe it doesn’t mean anything.

Except –

She might like girls.

Does it even matter, if she would never be able to admit it to anyone else? If the idea of bringing a girlfriend home to her mother makes her feel like she’s just woken up on a Saturday morning after drinking ten shots off someone’s stomach?

The point is: she does like boys. So she’ll just date boys. It’ll be fine. It’ll be easier.

She thinks she might be bisexual. Or pansexual. Or something.

She doesn’t want to label herself. What if she’s wrong?

_How does she figure it out?_

 

Eva makes the biggest mistake of her life at the end of Grade 10.

Ingrid’s boyfriend is tall, dark, and handsome. He’s charming and funny and he laughs at all of Eva’s jokes. He makes her feel like she’s on fire in the best way possible, like she’s the sun, the moon, the center of the entire universe.

She thinks she might be in love with him.

That doesn’t mean she doesn’t regret sleeping with him, betraying Ingrid’s trust, being a stupid, back-stabbing, slut, bitch, whore –

Ingrid and Sara will never speak to her again.

But she has Jonas, at least, who holds her in his arms when she cries and makes her feel so fucking _safe_.

 

So she definitely likes boys. Problem solved.

 

Except Noora looks like a goddess in red lipstick, a deity draped in sunlight, with a smile like roses and a wit like thorns.

And it’s not like Eva wants to date her or anything, but she’s so _beautiful_ and _confident_ and _smart_.

Eva almost wants to _be_ her.

She’ll just have to settle for being her friend.

 

So Eva thinks she’s bisexual.

She keeps this to herself. She’s not ready to tell anyone and she’s still not sure if she’s right, but it _feels_ right. She repeats the word to herself at night, _bisexual, bisexual, bisexual_ , like it’s a church hymn, a song. It makes her feel at ease.

(The idea of telling anyone else still sinks into her like a stab through the heart. She fears the rejection more than anything else.)

 

Shit happens.

She and Jonas break up.

It’s fine. Relationships end and it wasn’t like Eva had any illusion that they were going to last forever. They’d been built on lies and mistrust and cheating. It’d been time for them to end.

 

And she and Ingrid make up. Sort of.

They’re not friends again, but Eva doesn’t expect them to be. She appreciates Ingrid for everything she did when Eva moved here, for making her feel welcome and being her friend, but their friendship has been beaten over and over and over again. It’s a million glass pieces on the floor. Unfixable.

But they’re not fighting anymore.

And Eva has new friends now: Noora and Sana and Chris and Vilde.

She’ll be okay.

She repeats it like a mantra.

 _Okay, okay, okay_.

And quietly, underneath it, still testing out how the word fits on her tongue, _bisexual, bisexual, bisexual._

 

Old habits die hard.

She always feels better when there’s a bottle in her hand, even if she does end up with her tongue jammed down either Vilde or Penetrator Chris’ throat every time she drinks.

And, okay, she might be having a _thing_ with Penetrator Chris, but it doesn’t mean anything.

How could it, when Vilde is the only thing she can focus on when they’re in the same room together, even if she’s just a dot in Eva’s peripheral vision?

 

Eva’s still not sure how a crush feels.

Maybe she had a crush on Noora. She’d certainly _noticed_ Noora, in the same way she’d _noticed_ Ingrid or _noticed_ Sara or _noticed_ Penetrator Chris.

But Jonas had made her feel like an explosion, a detonation, fire on gasoline.

And Vilde –

The thing about Vilde is that Eva isn’t sure Vilde will ever like her back. Because she _does_ like Vilde, and she  is surer about that than ever. Vilde occupies every crevice of her mind. Vilde is the thought that keeps  popping up whenever Eva is trying to go to sleep, or study, or do _anything_. Every time Vilde smiles at her, she feels like she is floating.

Vilde is a heart attack, a supernova, every star in the night sky. She is heaven on two feet, and it’s the sappiest thing Eva’s ever thought, but all she wants to do is hold her hand and kiss her lips and sleep next to her.

But Eva isn’t about to ruin their friendship by announcing that she likes Vilde. That she likes _girls_.

Vilde can be so naïve sometimes. If Vilde likes girls, Eva suspects it will be a long time before even Vilde, let alone anyone else, knows about it.

 

So she gets drunk at parties, she admires from afar, and she thinks life isn’t so bad.

 

So she’s still not ready to tell anyone that she likes girls. So she’s still not sure if bisexual is the right label for her.

But that’s okay. The earth keeps revolving around the sun and Vilde keeps chatting on about something that no one else really understands and Eva will figure things out eventually.

 

**Author's Note:**

> yeah im working through some stuff. it's chill.  
> [tumblr](http://lizsutton.tumblr.com)


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